Hydra - Multibox Leveling Helper

Hydra is a multibox leveling helper that aims to minimize the number of times you need to actively control secondary characters.

Scroll down for a full list of features. Options are accessible by typing “/hydra” or by browsing to the Hydra panel in the Interface Options window. Several common commands can also be keybound in the standard Key Bindings window.

Please note that Hydra is not a replacement for key cloning software — addons can’t cast spells, target units, or perform many other actions, so you will still need some way to send your key strokes and mouse clicks to your secondary characters’ instances of WoW.

Hydra operates on the basis of “trust”. You tell it which characters you trust, whether they're your multibox characters or just your questing buddies, and features are enabled or disabled depending on whether you’re in a party with trusted characters or not. For example, whispers are only forwarded to party chat if everyone in the party is on your trusted list.

You can add or remove names to your trusted list in the options panel. There's also an option to add everyone in your current party to your trusted list, for quick setup for multiboxing groups.

Automation

Accepts summons and resurrections.

Declines duels, guilds, and arena teams.

Repairs equipment and sells junk to vendors.

Chat

Forwards whispers to secondary characters to party chat.

Forwards responses in party chat back to the sender as a whisper from the secondary character.

Follow

Notifies you when a party member starts or stops following you.

Type “/followme” or “/fme” to command all party members to follow you.

Type “/corpse accept” to make all other party members who are ghosts accept their corpse.

Type “/corpse release” to make all other party members who are dead release their spirit.

Mount

Causes other characters in the party (and in range) to mount when you mount.

Party

Accepts party invitations from trusted characters.

Request a party invitation by typing “/inviteme name”, where “name” is the target. If no target is specified, your current target unit will be used.

Request a promotion to party leader by typing “/promoteme”.

Quest

Accepts quests that another trusted party member already accepted, or all quests

Turns in completed quests (you still need to choose a reward if there’s a choice)

Abandons quests abandoned by trusted party members

Taxi

Autoselects the last taxi node selected by anyone in the party in the last 60 seconds.

Type “/cleartaxi” to manually clear the selection for the current character.

Hold the Shift key when interacting with the flight master to bypass this module’s functionality.

Limitations & Caveats

Chat module limitations:

Whispers containing a high number of “spam words” (words that commonly appear in goldselling, powerleveling, phishing, or other spam) are forwarded as “POSSIBLE SPAM” instead of the actual text, to avoid having your account appear to send spam. If you want to see the actual message, check the receiving character’s chat log.

Whisper forwarding is disabled in non-trusted parties, and there is currently no notification if someone whispers a secondary character in this situation.

Primary character detection:

Hydra currently offers two methods for detecting the primary character. By default, it assumes that the primary character is the party leader. You can use the options panel to switch to checking for applicaton focus instead, but this method will not work if you are using multiple physical machines, and may not work if you are running multiple clients in windowed mode.

Advanced Chat Usage

If whispers from multiple senders are forwarded to party chat, your responses in party chat are assumed to be directed toward the sender of the most recently forwarded whisper. You can respond to a previously forwarded whisper by prefacing your message in party chat with “@name”, where “name” is the name of your character that forwarded the whisper.

If whispers from multiple senders are forwarded by the same character, you can respond to a previous message by whispering that character with “@name message”, where “name” is the name of the person you want “message” to be whispered to. You can also use this feature to have your secondary characters send whispers to people who haven’t already whispered you.

Version 6.0.2.206

Updated for WoW 6.0

Taxi sharing now works immediately for secondary characters who already have the taxi map open

Improved dismount detection for noobs who click off auras to dismount

Fixed junk selling profit report for stacked items

Added alchemy and engineering specialization quests to the ignore list

Version 5.4.8.187

Fixed textures overlapping on the "remove name" dropdown when there are no names to remove

Follow, Mount, and Taxi functionality seem to work as expected. These are the main things that I use, so this is a "very good thing".

I am working on testing quest functionality; looks like there might be some problems here (but I need to find a quest that is definitely sharable, and work with that, before drawing any conclusions). If it looks like it is not working, I will write up a ticket with the relevant debug output.

Dismount-with-group is "not working"; when I get a chance, I will get to a quiet place, test it, and write up a ticket with the relevant debug output.

1. Changing group loot and free for all manually, because sometimes me and my friend are using it to control each other when one of us is afk and we want to bring Group loot up when we're next to each other. Right now I can't cancel the FFA option even when disabling the group module.

A workaround for your problem (inelegant as it may be) is for you to remove him from your trusted list to turn off FFA, and add him back when you want FFA turned on.

If you need him to refollow because he gets thrown off follow mode for some reason, again you can add/remove him from trusted list as needed. You could also both get KeepFollowing (http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/kfollow) which is a highly aggressive follow addon - one you'd only want to enable while your friend is afk.

Please use the ticket tracker in the future. I don't know why nobody is able to read the big bold cyan text near the top of the description that specifically says DON'T USE COMMENTS TO REPORT BUGS OR REQUEST FEATURES.

Anyway, I won't add either of those features. This addon is designed for multiboxing, not for covering for your lazy friend who goes AFK during raids without bothering to tell the raid. Nobody uses group loot or ready checks while multiboxing, and I have to intention of adding options or making other changes to support "off label" uses. If you want to use it that way, you're on your own with the options that already exist.

Thanks for the great addon, I used to use it way back and was so excited to learn it's back and functional.

2 things are really missing for me though:

1. Changing group loot and free for all manually, because sometimes me and my friend are using it to control each other when one of us is afk and we want to bring Group loot up when we're next to each other. Right now I can't cancel the FFA option even when disabling the group module.

2. Accepting READY from a Readycheck if possible. my friend got kicked while being in the bathroom right before a boss, would be awesome if I could save his shiny metal behind.

... even though I enabled all debug options, all I ever get is the string "Hydra:", on a line by itself, over and over again (sometimes with slight color variations, usually a kind of salmon color, rarely a kind of mustard yellow color). No informational "debug" text.

Red prefix = debug message. Gold prefix = normal message. If you're not seeing any actual text after the prefix, I can only guess that you have some other addon (probably a chat mod) breaking basic "add messages to the chat frame" functionality. If you're seeing this with all other addons disabled, then you're absolutely getting at least one hard error; enable BugSack to catch it, and then post a bug report ticket.

Installed Hydra 5.4.8-175, cleaned out saved variables, enabled all debug options, formed a 2-character group (both on the same realm), performed "add group".

Follow "works".

I can confirm the issues with mount functionality. Same settings as the other user documented (mount with group on, use random mount off, dismount with group on). Just "doesn't work".

However, even though I enabled all debug options, all I ever get is the string "Hydra:", on a line by itself, over and over again (sometimes with slight color variations, usually a kind of salmon color, rarely a kind of mustard yellow color). No informational "debug" text. Not certain a screenshot would be meaningful in this case. Is there something I need to do in LUA to enable debugging (don't see anything to that effect on the front page for Hydra here at WoWInterface)?

Going back to Hydra 5.4.2-151 (I don't multibox cross-realm).

Happy to help test, if we can get debug reporting properly and you can get new versions to me (we were in touch via email at one point).

I've copied all of your comments over to actual bug report tickets, and will hopefully have time to do something with them this weekend. If you have any info to add, or other bugs to report, please use the ticket system so I can see everything in a centralized location. Thanks.

Please enable debugging for the Mount module (/hydra > Debug panel > Mount checkbox) and tell me what messages you get on the current primary character and one of the secondary characters when you try to mount.

I turned debugging on all 5 of my characters.
All on same server, in party, not raid.
Here is what I got on the current primary character:
Hydra: Summoning mount Obsidian Nightwing 121820
Hydra: SendAddonMessage Mount 121820 Obsidian Nightwing PARTY